Hi folks.

I have some questions that I'm hoping some of you lot can answer

1) One of my settlements (Abernathy Farm, also happened in Oberland Station recently) happiness rating has been falling from 80 down to 70. They are not being attacked, not been attacked, have enough power, beds, defence, food, water. All settlers have jobs.....what gives? I don't fast travel from inside the settlement but outside the build zone.

2) When I give settlers better weapons ie: 10mm pistol or shotgun do they need ammo refills if they use the guns given to them?

3) If I give a companion a upgraded 10mm pistol (Piper) does she still need ammo or use unlimited ammo like her standard 10mm pistol? Pro tip: Give her a super sledge hammer and watch her wreck some super mutants

Thanks in advance folks

1:Try some more decorations and stuff like radios, chairs tables and shops. The more people you have the harder it is to keep them all happy.

2:Settlers like NPC' have unlimited ammo so long as one round is in there inventory. (exception explosive weapons like missile launchers do consume ammo).

3: Only default weapons have unlimited ammo for companions. Change the weapon and they need ammo.

Yeah, i cannot seem to keep Abernathy happy at all lol. I even built them a Pool room with a bar and so many other things.

Check the beds aren't too close together, so they can't get to them properly. That is one cause of annoyance for them.

Hmm, ill check that out.

Yea, my rule on beds is that if I can't move between them, then likely neither can my settlers.

regarding ammo, check the settlers weapon, usually the one they are using will have the box besides it when you open their inventory menu. if the ammo that goes with the weapon doesn't have a box besides it, then they don't have enough ammo, so add some until a box appears next to it and they are happy as clams!

If you section off an area of a building for each settler to sleep in and decorate it with a picture, dresser, rug, lights, radio, plant, happiness will rise. Don't forget to assign each settler to a bed. Also, I heard that there is a glitch where happiness will fall if you have a TV in the area they sleep.

I don't know if this is considered a glitch or not but if you give your settlers Minigun's, 1 ammo for it, and select the Minigun as their weapon in their inventory they will have an unlimited supply of ammo.

I clothe them so I can keep track of who is who. Example, farmers get the Farmhand outfit. I put the original clothes they had on in their dresser along with the original weapon and ammo that they had on them before I gave them the minigun.

Overdo-it on Food, Defense, give each settler a decorated area for their bed, minigun with 1 ammo, and you're happiness should rise and maintain. I just started getting back in to settlement building on this pass through the game. I have 6 settlers at Red Rocket and I went from 35% Happiness to a steady 71% happiness just by doing what I said above.

When I section off their sleeping area I use the flooring as a guide and put in free standing walls. Then I use the short pieces of fence to kind of create a makeshift entryway.

Other things such as putting in a bar/drink stand will greatly increase settlement happiness. But it takes a while to get to the point where you have the perks and caps to do that.

hth.

As long as things stay in the 65% or better range, I wouldn't worry about it.

Happyness fluctuates.

Seems to be largely random to me.

In fact, I seldom have a settlement go over 75% and only one or two hit 80%.

Only Sanctuary ever tops the 80% mark.

And the amount of stuff I've added to that place boggles the mind. Seriously, without the ability to "reset" the build limit by dismantling everything I ever come in contact with there I would have exceeded the built limit about 20 times over. And it STILL drops into the 70's on occasion (it then climbs back into the 80's again).

For arming settlers I give the guards automatic weapons and preferred weapon is the Minigun with some 5mm ammo. Eventually all will have Miniguns. With the other turrets in the settlement they are quite powerful.

For bedding I usually only have one or two beds in a room.

thanks for the replies folks

I've tested some things and it seems to be related to fast travel in some way - maybe?

Was playing tonight and again Abernathys' happiness fell after I fast traveled even outside the settlement build area - same with Oberland. This didn't happen when I just walked away fro the settlements and did not fast travel. Just to state again I have not fast traveled with the boundaries of each settlement.

In regards to decorations - I've put potted plants and wall decorations in certain parts of buildings - seats for all the settlers etc and this did effect the happiness but again it started to decrease when I fast traveled away - no water or bes etc

So looks like the best option is to not use fast travel when exiting a settlement for now.

Again thanks to you all for replying to my post

Have fun

Well I've blown my own theory 'out of the water' so to speak lol

Didn't fast travel and still the usual suspects ain't happy - Abernathy, Sanctuary and Oberland station - this happened after 15 minutes of gameplay. Traveled to each and happines went up.

Abernathy - no water - when I went there water was back to 32. There are 11 settlers there. 71 happiness was 80.

Oberland - just not happy, no reason given - not under attack - all settlers stood in a group doing sod all!! 8 settlers with 32 food, 45(ish) power, 21 water (64 happiness, was 70)

Sanctuary - not enough beds for the 16 settlers - when I got there the count went back to 24 beds. 75 happiness - was 81 happiness.

All defence levels are over 90 each and I've given them new weapons with '1' ammo each. All settlers have jobs, beds and enough food and water. The beds have easy access and are not built too close to each other.

I know it's stupid as the happiness levels are good but they reach a certain level with happiness and then it starts to go down. Also the pip boy can sometimes state a settlement isn't happy but when I get there the settlement is fine.

All the other settlements are fine and dandy and happiness is either building up or at a steady rate.

What I'm going to try next is storing all food/water/beds/turrets until totals reach 'zero' and then re-plant/build resources until they reach the 'right' levels for the number of settlers per settlement. Not 100% sure of 'numbers' needed for each but I'll look in the guide or online etc.

Cheers folks

heh I have gotten to the point to not care about what the game says the happiness is. I have never had anyone at the red rocket with the exception of dogmeat. It even says I have zero settlers and for some reason red rocket happiness is going down. my food is 3 my water is 3. defense is 5 and dogmeat has his dog house and bowl.

not sure if this matters. in one of my settlements, i placed sleeping bags under beds, literally leaving about a 3 inch gap where no advlt human could sleep. yet, when I had to speak to Preston one time, surprisingly he was sleeping on the sleeping bag under the bed.

this settlements happiness has never fallen below 80, but fluctuates between 85.

The settlement data in the pip-boy display is bugged all to hell and completely unreliable most of the time. The reality once you travel there and check the settlement in workshop mode is often quite different.

If you want your companion to use the weapon you assign to him / her, then you must also give the ammo as well because once of out ammo he / she will default back to using their own weapon.

This applies even if you give your companion the same weapon type that uses the same ammo. For example, Piper's default weapon is a 10mm pistol. If I give her a legendary incendiary 10mm pistol and 100 rounds of 10mm ammo she will use the legendary pistol until she runs out of ammo, then she will default back to her own weapon.

Maybe Dogmeat caught fleas from those darn Molerats in the parking lot and that's why his happiness is going down?

Sounds like you might have the TV bug?

I've just had a look around the 'net' in regards to this bug with the bubble shaped televisions and other electricals (juke boxes etc) and this seems to be a 'big' bug/problem and I'll give it a go (removed most electricals) later once I'm chilling after real life stuff.

Will report what I find including the steps I've mentioned above in my previous posts.

I'm giving serious consideration to not bothering with fast travel and just doing 'basic' settlements from now on.

I hope this gets sorted in a future patch or patches or I'll just forget doing settlements, which is a shame considering the 'hype' Bethesda threw into the settlement aspect of this game.

Here's the thing.... its not bugged in the way you think the settlement will actually behave like it has those stats. So if you had a water production settlement which produces 160 water but it says 0 due to the bug in the pipboy menu. You won't find as much or any excess purified water in the settlements workbench. The bug is those resources actually ARE down not that the pipboy is displaying them inaccurately.

Well folks I'm afraid to say nothing worked

yet again it was the three settlements that had the problem..... Sanctuary, Abernathy and Oberland.

I did not fast travel, removed excess crops, water (still a slight excess - Oberland had 8 settlers and 24 water and approx same in food), beds (all with ample space to get into), removed any electricals (tv, Juke Box etc) - on a side note only Sanctuary had two televisions and Abernathy had one 'bubble' television. Although this seemed to clear up the problem after 35 mins it happened in all three settlements again (decreasing happiness) - assigned beds to each settler. None of the bases were under attack or had been attacked (searched high and low for dead bodies, talked to settlers including npcs), each settlement had at least one store in place and the lowest defence rating was 87 (exact number unkown but was in late eighties).

In regards to ammo and settlers I am unable to report anything due to the fact that no settlements were attacked and all settlers had their 'one' piece of ammo for each weapon given.

This is now the second of three play throughs (1st play through had no problems at all) that has had problems with settlements and I've started a fourth now - what I'll do is keep settlements to the basic numbers of settlers in place ie: Sanctuary has five settlers to start with, Tenpiness (correct spelling?) has 2, same with Oberland (unless one of them is kidnapped) etc etc. In regards to settlements with no occupants (Starlight drive in et all) I'll keep it to under 5 settlers.

Fingers crossed!! Will report back in approx 2 days with any findings I have.

One final thing - I've looked around on the 'net' and it seems this is not an isolated problem and has been happening a lot to other people who have played this game. It is a shame as the damn game is good and I am enjoying it but I hate it when things go '[censored] up'! Oh and they (the settlers) weren't HAPPY in the end for sure when I nuked em all to hell with my FATMAN!

I've been playing around with settlement happiness lately as well but I have never heard of the ammo thing. I'll have to try this.


Currently I have 4 real settlements. Sanctuary is just what it is. I have provided shops, decorations and beds and maintain a steady 80%. I have heard that providing them separate sleeping areas helps so in Abernathy, I built 18 individual cabins. Each has a bed, plant, rug, dresser, light and radio tuned to classical. I have 18 settlers and am maintaining 85%. There is a ton of crops and as well, in every settlement, I build a 3-4 story defense tower taking defense to about 200. I can't get the happiness up but I'm going to try that ammo thing.


In Starlight, I have 28 individual sleeping cabins, more resembling a Motel 6. I have 7 lower levels with their own separate entry doors with 7 above that, offset back but their doors are open as I can't place doors mid floor. Then I've got that mirrored across the open shops plaza so I have 14 units on each side. Anyway, the happiness has been slowly gong up to 86%. That's the highest I've gotten so far.


I used to have 18 beds and 18 settlers at Sunshine. I hate that place as you can't do anything with the bodies and houses but the other day the settlers jumped to 27! Holy crap...I had to whip out some beds and rearranging pretty fast.


Meanwhile...My Nordhagen beach house is a beautiful vision with a 3 level workshop with power armor loft. God I love this game.


Add... I fast travel all the time from inside my settlements and haven't noticed anything odd.

One last thing to try - destroy radio beacons (the things that attract settlers) in the trouble settlements, and/or make sure when you do any fast travel, you run to the point where it says "radio signal lost" or whatever that message is then run a little further to be sure, and not into a radio signal (say from a nearby settlement, when you're on any old mission or hunting in any area near a settlement).

When you have a lot of settlements, those radio beacon areas can almost overlap, and you can find yourself within range when you're just passing through areas.

Sanctuary btw has about 4 or 5? TVs hidden away (definitely not just two), you might want to go looking for them.

There must be some strange hidden mechanics at work. I allways put many beds in one room, don't give beds to settlers, have idle settlers, don't use decorations, fast travel all the time, did not look for TVs and have happiness rates between 70% and 85%. But I have only three real settlements, Castle, Starlight Drive-In and Somerville, with 18, 8 and 14 settlers. Oberland and Finch are 4, Warwick are 6 settlers. I try to get not too many settlers. Does the number of settlements count? My main interest in settlements is only to have artillery, to be honest. And I like building defensive structures. Unfortunately I never had an attack on one of my settlements till now although three have less defense than water + food.

Just wanted to say thank you to you all for taking the time to reply to my post/s on this thread-topic thing. It's appreciated and I'm going to give settlements one last shot in this game and do as I've said my my previous post (minimum settlers, food, defence etc) and see if that has any effect at all.

In regards to televisions in Sanctuary - I had removed them all, there was nothing left scrap-able in any settlement location as I am OCD in regards to 'hoovering' stuff up lol

As for the walk till you loose the signal from your settlement beacon - that becomes nigh on impossible in most areas as settlements are dotted all over the place but I'll do as you suggested and store them once used so the signal is removed from the game world.

So to recap I will be doing the following..... minimum settlers at each location, in empty locations only put 2-3 settlers, basic food/water, defence as needed (no guard towers) with turrets. NO electricals (might put a single radio in each settlement - away from sleeping quarters), separate bedrooms for each settler (assign beds to each settler), no turrets / power sources near bedrooms. Each settler will get a new weapon with 'one' ammo for each gun (will see how that goes). When I've reached the number of settlers needed at empty locations I will 'store' the beacon towers so as to 'remove' the signal from the game world. No fast travel at all in game (something I've never done in any Bethesda game) and then I'll see how it goes

This is a 'crying' shame as I've not had a single problem gameplay wise with this game apart from the settlement issues that I've recently had.

Oh well I'll be giving it a go later today and like I've said I'll report back in a couple or so days.

Thanks one and all